With the arrival of Peak Oil, the curtain has closed on Act 1 of the drama Petroleum Man. What will happen in Act 2? Chekhov said, "If there's a gun on the wall at the beginning of the play, by the end it must go off." In the world's nuclear arsenal are many guns on the wall. If life copies art, will there be an Act 3 in which the players, having learned their lesson the hard way, live sustainably? To explore these and other questions... FTW's Act 2 Blog. Read, comment, take heart! Orkin

17 comments:

On reading the Simmons article, you have to wonder why the shortage of rigs (and refineries, though not mentioned here). Was it a simple miscalculation of future demand and of how fast we would be driven into deep water, or did the oil industry figure it wouldn't need to invest so much in equipment because of depletion?

I have a question,that may seem kind of stupid,but I"m going to ask it anyway.Now that Cynthia McKinney is running for President with the Green Party,would it still be ill advised to vote for her considering elections have been rigged in the past and likely will in the future by proprietary voting software?Or would it be better to do as has been suggested in FTW for years,and vote for her with your money by donating to her campaign so that maybe before elections begin she can use it to get something done about the rigging of them.I want to support Cynthia McKinney,but I don't want to go out and vote for her if it isn't going to count(or get counted).Everytime I think about it,what comes to mind is something Mike said once about expecting your vote to count(among other things:doing business with major US financial institutions,and corporations...etc)is what funds US tyranny.

Recently Zionism pundits are arguing that the US is in Iraq purely because of pressure from the Zionist lobby and Israel, and that the war has nothing to do with oil. I won't go further into it here, as I have responded to this absurd argument on my own blog.

I've spent most of to-day planting fruit, veg & herb seeds in yoghurt pots (I never throw them away), and generally pottering. I got to thinking about the possibilities of a new monetary system - and thought about the way gold used to be stored as a way of setting a real value on paper currency (not that it is now). But what if, instead of gold, people stored "Pledges" of real value at some central point? You know, things like hours of time (such as home nursing care/respite, child care - and a myriad other professional & semi-professional services), home grown/produced stuff, temporary use of valuable equipment - in fact, the list of "Real Value" could expand on and on.

Once someone has deposited a "Pledge," they're issued (maybe electronically), a certain amount of "Currency" (whatever you'd like to call it), of agreed equivalent value. They could then "Spend" this on other people's "Pledges" stored at that central point - and if they were presented with "Currency" in exchange for one of their own "Pledges," they'd have to redeem it (or opt out of the system).

That's just the skeleton of the idea that was knocking around in my brain, a very rough outline. Any comments?

As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States change their definition of privacy.

Translation: We don't like the idea that we can't spy on people legally so let's redefine privacy...

Privacy as defined by Webster

1 a: the quality or state of being apart from company or observation: seclusion b: freedom from unauthorized intrusion (one's right to privacy)

Amendment IVThe right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The problem here is it that they feel it is not unreasonable in "the war on terror" to monitor everything we do. So ergo, it doesn't matter if we, the public feel it is unreasonable. They are just conditioning the public to take the pill making the transition smooth.

On a side note, I had a guy I work with proclaim that there is nothing we can do to fix global warming because global warming is not the fault of man with absolutely no justification for his views! Denying the Godzilla monster in the room seems to be the consensus of most people I've talked to.

Just as Kunstler (correctly) predicted that the suburbs would become the slums of the 21st century, I predict that the biggest problem facing the production of non-fossil fuels will be not technology, but getting feedstock.

I was reading an article on cnn this morning about Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Tuesday calling on President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to immediately step down. It states:

Musharraf declared a state of emergency and suspended democracy earlier this month.

With the 2 presidential directives above(several posts)they give Bush or preceeding president the right to do the same. My thought is this: Why would you push a supreme dictator clause into effect unless you intended to use it?

So right now there's all this hoopla about Brazil's Tupi field which is about 23,000 feet in the ground. It's estimated reserves are about 8.5 billon barrels, now people are saying that they can get 4.5 million barrels a day from the field when it finally become operational. At that rate it would take just a little over 5 years to COMPLETELY deplete the field...Presuming it actually has that much AND that adequate technology is developed to reach 23,000 feet through water, rock, and salt. Sounds great, sounds like we are all in the clear. THANK YOU BRAZIL!!! Forget you "peak" oil... (sarcasm heavily applied)

David's observations about Tupi field are well taken. And the great depth of this field underscores the reality that oil drillers are being driven into deep waters for new finds. This field won't be on line for a while, and the expense of exploiting it means the oil won't be selling for $20/b.

After WWII some nazis moved to the USA, and still maintain links with Germany via pharmaceutical and chemical companies, from wence comes the funding for the burgeoning Fourth Reich (GermanEU), which is intent on absorbing as many coutries as possible against the people's wishes.All in the name of globalisation, multiculturalism, ultimate power, and greed, via the New World Order.They are using the threat of terror to gain ever increasing control of the people's of Europe, curtailing their freedom of speech and movement, while promising the opposite.Free Market Economic policy is being used to gain financial control of countries and governments.These evil people are causing starvation and poverty across the world, to make sure they maintain their superiority.They are changing western countries into third world status, slowly but surely, bribing high flyers to do their bidding, and brain washing under 'Common Purpose' so that these gullible people do what they do for 'the greater good'.H L Mencken said "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary".